The meaning of meditation 2

Julián Peragón Arjuna writes in his book Meditation synthesis (Ed. acanthus) about the meaning of this journey of personal transformation that is meditation. We continue this series of reflections for going by drawing a map that approaches us to it)See the previous installment).

Observation

How would we do to see the breadth of a forest? Surely we climb to the tallest tree. We reach to the top of a mountain to see a good broad horizon, or going the magnifying glass or binoculars to see better what we have in front of their noses or at the other end, in the distance. In all cases, you are looking for is a change of perspective that makes us a better observation.

That is what we seek in meditation: a privileged point of observation on our lives. In the middle of the market, in the bustle of the city, in the complexity of social relations or under the pressure of our work, the ability to observe wanes or is altered. It is necessary to take away.

To observe the real life that occurs every day must be out of the ordinary; to understand the peculiar knot of our life must be removed is enough. Therefore, every day in our room or on our terrace, walking through the park or forest, we seek a small counterpoint to our reality, from silence and solitude, not so much to judge that our life but to understand it better.

Clarity

And here we encounter a second obstacle in meditation. Beyond or more here from the turmoil, we find our confusion. Although we have more refined means of observation, not remove clear water if our eyes are cloudy. Anything served to Galileo focus your telescope to the fathers of the Church to observe the sky, if they did not know what to observe in the sky.

Not enough calm, we said: should be clear gaze. You have to see where it comes from our confusion. It is possible that we have not cultivated a closer look to see the events that take place come from somewhere and go to another; that we have not seen yet that life isn't made of still photographs or messy moments but all and oneself within that great, is part of a process that is intertwined with each other, forming a network of networks. We jumped out of a circumstance to another without perceiving the subtle thread that connects them. There is a certain laziness in down to the depths of the processes, to the ins and outs of our minds, to the details of our desire. In this sense, there is a resistance to complexity. Naively we want that things are what they seem and prefer to sign without reading the small print, buy without attending the technical considerations or travel without knowing too much of the social environment where we landed.

However, our ignorance has nothing to do with the greater or less quantity of information which we have; our ignorance is of another order: tries to confuse our essential nature with the social image that we intend to and replaces the impermanent reality that surrounds us for a tower of ideas fixed about how is the world and the creatures that inhabit it.

Meditation teaches us to look at, to see beyond forms, to recognize the obvious and not so obvious, to contrast the truths of the senses with the evidence of the reason... in short, to reunify the objective and subjective, the exterior and the interior, the form with the background.

We often don't see the beauty of things because we not look carefully. Look carefully as a way to reconstruct everything, of small when we adivinábamos the underlying figure, which was behind a string of seemingly random points. Indeed, the contingent situations of our lives are only apparent. Learn to see takes time, discipline, motivation, sensitivity and support. When the storm abates, the light expands.

Sit

The first act in our meditation practice is deeply revolutionary: just sit. From the normative vision of society, meditate implies withdrawing, leaving the set current. In many cases, meditation is seen as a useless, non-productive, since society focuses clearly on having. In total contrast to the society, meditation, that nothing has to do with having, puts his accent in the different modes of being.

Meditation leads us radically inwards, to an intimate context, to enliven our internal lights. In this sense, it is a personal and non-transferable experience. Although the meditative traditions are gathered his followers in dojos, ashrams or monasteries - community spaces where there is inevitably a social environment-, these spaces were clearly agreed not to interfere too much in the process of introspection.

Meditation is out of the whirlwind of ideas, the waterfall of actions, the roller-coaster relations. Not only by meditating we seek some protection; We even avoided talk of the own meditative experience, beyond the necessary follow-up by our guides, because talk would be "breaking" revealing intimacy. Meditation is one delicate flower that must be protected from the weather. Sitting is a way of saying (to others and to self): "Enough!". Simply push the River, just grease the machinery of the neuroses, just to be part of the problem, and - here what is really important - enough suffer unnecessarily.

Seating should be brave, because away from the established generates a certain anguish. But it is still more courageous arising after the meditation to undertake their own lives, that a few minutes or a few hours has been put on hold. When we find an obstacle on the road, only apparently are taking a few steps back... actually what we are doing is to take run to jump further.

This is a second installment of The sense of meditation, first chapter of the book Meditation synthesis, Julian Peragón Arjuna.